UMass Memorial purchases surgical assistant robot

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By Laura Finaldi

UMass Memorial Medical Center has purchased a robotic surgical assistant that will help neurosurgeons with complex procedures.

UMass Memorial purchased the robotized surgical assistant, as it is called, from French surgical assistant robot developer MEDTECH for an undisclosed amount during the manufacturer’s fourth fiscal quarter 2016. It was one of seven robots sold in the United States, according to MEDTECH, and it is one of the few robotic surgical assistants being used by an academic medical center in the U.S., according to UMass Memorial.

The robot’s computer system has a computer brain and a robotic arm-like structure, which work together to make surgery go by faster, according to UMass Memorial. It will allow a neurosurgeons to use it to make 3-D maps of a patient’s brain and look at the images from any angle or at any depth. Surgeons can use it to mark the areas they need to reach and to chart the paths they’ll need to take to reach those areas, according to UMass Memorial.

It will be used mainly for epilepsy surgery, according to Dr. Oguz Cataltepe, a neurosurgeon at UMass Memorial. It’s useful for epileptic surgical procedures because neurosurgeons need to place fine electrodes in different parts of the brain at different angles in order to determine the root of seizures, according to UMass Memorial.